


First Five Times

by deathwailart



Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Battle Couple, F/F, Femslash, First Kiss, First Meetings, Pre-Relationship, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-26
Updated: 2016-06-26
Packaged: 2018-07-18 07:49:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7306069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathwailart/pseuds/deathwailart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aela first meets the Dragonborn when she helps slay a giant.  When she signs up to join the Companions, they can't help but cross paths.</p>
<p>Written for the femslash big bang June prompt: first five times they met</p>
            </blockquote>





	First Five Times

  
**i;**  
The first time they meet the ash of Helgen still dusts the woman's black hair grey when she jumps the fence, unsheathing her axe without hesitation, the sort of attitude they're running out of these days, Aela will note later. When she's not firing arrows at the giant she's attacking alongside Ria and Farkas, mindful of them as well as keeping clear of the club their foe is swinging as well as the long legs and giant feet that try to kick and stomp at them. Not that any of them know about Helgen because the news comes with the stranger in an ill-fitting Stormcloak cuirass that stinks of sweat and flame. They bring the giant down faster for the help, and it's Aela who stops the stranger as she catches her breath; Farkas has a reason for his nickname after all, and Ria is still new to their ranks yet while Aela's blood stretches back through the Companions for generations.

The woman straightens as she catches her breath, putting the axe away as Aela praises her; the cuirass stretches tight across her broad shoulders when moves, and she's tall, taller than Aela is, shorter than Farkas though less broad, reminding her more of Vilkas with her tapered build. Her hair is black this close beneath the ash, and against the vivid smudged lines of her red war paint streaking down from her eyes through her cheeks to the strong line of her jaw her skin is pale.

"I must give word to Jarl Balgruuf from Riverrun, to tell him about what happened in Helgen. I gave my word. But honour, coin? How can I turn that down if this Kodlak sees my worth?" She looks down at herself then at Aela, huffing out a quiet laugh that sounds a little embarrassed. "Perhaps once I get things I didn't borrow from a friend's dead friends."

There's a story in all that but this is Skyrim and there is always a story. Aela gives her directions though they're hardly needed, watching her head in the direction of one of the guards, feeling a smile tug at her lips.

Days pass as they always pass in Whiterun. There's training, news of work that suits them that they take as tales of the war rumble on, others taking honour and glory that isn't theirs to take. The old man keeps his council with Vilkas, Farkas shadows his brother, and she seeks out Skjor to go running wild in the night with the beast blood hot in their veins. By day when she isn't needed she hunts the way she did with her father before she joined – the Companions have never needed to buy their meat with her in their ranks after all. The stranger comes back one night when Athis and Njada are brawling once again, Skjor laughing across the room from her – this is what life is after all, wild and unrestrained. She misses Skjor rising to greet the newcomer because she's too busy cheering on the fight as Njada pins Athis to the ground with all her might (for all that there's friction between Njada and everyone it seems, she's one of them, she'd fight to the death for each person beneath this roof) but once it's all over and everything has been set to rights save Athis nursing his battered pride and split lip, they're sat by the fire with a mead.

Their armour may not be Skyforge steel but it's fur, good and thick, and the two-handed axe propped at the woman's side looks more suited to her as she takes in the room, smiling when she sets her eyes on Aela.

"I never got your name last time," Aela says by way of greeting as she settles next to her, and the woman sees even larger somehow now that they're up close.

"Hjördís, and you?"

"Aela. New to Skyrim?"

"Newly returned. I've been living in Cyrodiil for years, figured it was about time to return home, didn't plan on getting caught up in an Imperial ambush on Stormcloaks coming through the Pale Pass." She sighs, shaking her head as she downs half her mead in one go, mouth twisting at the corners but it sounds like a story, and it's been too long since they've had a new one.

"Come, tell me about it before Vilkas starts calling you whelp," Aela knows her shield-brother, that some of their members that still shared quarters without having rooms of their own are known by such names behind their backs. "It's been too long since I've heard a new tale."

Hjördís hesitates only for a moment before obliging her.

**ii;**  
The second time they meet is when Hjördís returns from Dustman's Cairn with Farkas, flecks of blood still caught in the ends of her braids, more of it splashed high on her cheeks but both she and Aela's shield-brother are wearing smiles upon their arrival back at Jorrvaskr. None of the blood belongs to her or to Farkas, so when the words are said they can all toast loudly, Aela's voice louder than the rest. After all, she was the one to extend the invitation, so she has every right to be proud, and so when Hjördís settles next to her when everyone else has had their turn getting the tale from their newest shield-sister, they simply knock their tankards together to drink in silence for a long while beneath the stars, beneath a sky streak pink and blue and purple, the moons close enough that Aela could reach out and touch them.

Her eyes move to the Underforge without thinking, seeking Skjor's good one but finding Kodlak's instead. The Silver Hand attacked again tonight, and there will be a discussion amongst the Circle that their newest member won't be privy to, one that already makes Aela fight to keep from grinding her teeth as she knocks back her mead in one gulp before pouring another. Always the Silver Hand, always the old man's judgement. She will drink her mead here while she lives, and she will go to the afterlife that she chooses; the moons gleam bright, white as bone, white as the teeth that could lengthen and grow should she will it but not tonight. Tonight she will lie awake in her bed, staring at the ceiling as her skin prickles out of respect, knowing her place. Her new sister will sleep in a bed on the other side of thick stone.

(For half a moment she thinks of offering her bed, of easing tension, but she's never done that with anyone within the Companions and she isn't about to start with the one Vilkas will still be calling whelp for months to come.)

"You said you were from Skyrim," she says before anything more foolish can slip from her mouth, to help wash away the thoughts of the butchers from her mind. Her head is too loud tonight. The judgement of her Harbinger weighing heavily. She might respect the man, might trust him, will follow him as they all would but he has never understood the heart beating in her chest, at times she thinks she's the only one in the whole world that ever will until she finally departs this life for the next, for the hunting grounds.

For her part Hjördís looks somewhere between relieved and grateful not to have to repeat the same tale yet again on the same night when it's still new and fresh, when it hasn't had time to grow or age, to draw breath and take on a life of its own the way stories must. And there are the glances she's giving some of them that Farkas confided to them: that she knows. That he had to change. That she didn't start screaming or lashing out. A promising start but the way the old man had looked…

Aela allows the woman's voice to draw her back again, out of her thoughts. This is her shield-sister's night, she will share it and allow her to enjoy it, her worries and frustrations can wait for another day.

"I grew up nearer Markarth; my father was a smith, my mother was an alchemist. Both of them wanted to teach their child their trade and so they did when they only had me. We moved to Cyrodiil before I was old enough to set out on my own," Hjördís explains, setting her tankard down on the table beside her so she can lean forward with her elbows on her thighs, resting her chin on her hands as she looks over to Aela. She's almost smiling, that peculiar expression of fondness mingled with pain and grief that's so common to Skyrim these days that Aela can already tell where the story is going, feeling her mouth twist to mirror it. "My father had bad lungs from working a forge inside and he'd mined as a boy for years, nothing my mother or I made for him did more than ease his passing to Sovngarde in the end. When my mother passed there wasn't anything else keeping me there.

"What about you? How did you join up?"

"All the women of my family have been Companions," Aela begins proudly. "All the way back to Hrotti Blackblade. My mother never lived long enough to see me become a Companion myself but when I fight? I honour her and all my shield-sisters through time, just like you."

There's a flush beneath the blood and paint on Hjördís' cheeks when Aela says that, and it might be the mead, but a part of her hopes it's not. "What about your father?"

"My father was a hunter. The usual sort of hunter. He raised me in the woods where we hunted everything that there was to hunt."

It's a pleasant silence they lapse into, no need to fill it the way some people do. They listen to the laughter as Torvar trips over his own feet managing to knock a whole tray of sweet rolls over onto his face as he passes out cold on the ground. Hjördís smiles and laughs brightly, like the sun appearing from behind the clouds after long miserable days on the hunt high in the Jerall mountains blinded by snow and frozen to the bone. Aela forces herself to stop staring, talking long into the night until both of them are hoarse.

(She doesn't lie awake staring at the ceiling when she bids Hjördís goodnight; Skjor is waiting for her, and the plains are waiting for them both.)

**iii;**  
The third time they meet is with the watery winter sun of Skyrim beating down on Aela's back as she stalks her third bear of the day. The beast rears on its hind legs, bellowing a challenge as she calmly takes aim the way her father taught her to when she was but a slip of a girl only for the arrow to sail through empty air when the bear goes down. She grits her teeth in frustration, picking up the pace to find out who – or what, this is Skyrim after all – stole her kill, ready to tear a strip from them. Instead she finds Hjördís, equally as surprised to see Aela judging by the cry she lets out, her axe clutched in both hands. The frustration dies in her throat, the rant instead becomes a laugh, the grimace a smile; it's been too long since she last clapped eyes on her newest shield-sister. Hjördís shows up to train, or to look for work, to do what needs to be done but since the day they say she slew a dragon out by the watchtower, the day that they all heard and felt the Greybeards call for her in voices that made the world shake, she hasn't spent nearly as much time in Jorrvaskr as she had before.

(Aela isn't missing a whelp. That would be ridiculous.)

"Didn't realise it was you, shield-sister," she says, wiping down her weapon before she sheathes it. They move as one to deal with the bear before it starts attracting unwanted attention, Aela leading the way back to the camp she set up late the previous evening; she grew up away from most people, there are times she needs her space and her quiet, just her and her bow, time away from the rest of the Companions.

"Likewise, you've been gone for some time." There's a hint of reproach in Aela's voice but she doesn't care. Hjördís is a grown woman, and if she can't handle that then she isn't Companions material either. She should be with them. Sharing whatever glory she's finding, not disappearing off alone for weeks and months at a time without a word.

"There's a lot to do with the Greybeards," Hjördís explains. It's not an apology and that's good, it makes Aela smile even though it can't be seen as they keep moving, a few mudcrabs snapping with interest but a good kick sends them scuttling away. "I don't think any of you would be interested in breath and focus or making the journey up seven thousand steps. Well, perhaps Vilkas but then I might want to kick him all the way down them."

Aela laughs at that, easing the bear down at her campsite so she can set to work skinning it. The wound from where Hjördís struck it with her axe is clean at least, no matter Aela's plans for the pelt in the end since she'll have to work it on the rack first or probably hand it to Eorlund though she wouldn't say no to another blanket now that she thinks about it. Her bed has felt cold lately.

"Are you headed back our way?" She doesn't like the hopeful lilt to her voice, so she doesn't look up from her where she works her blade cleanly and efficiently, the motions learned so long ago she could likely do them with her eyes shut.

"That's the plan. I've missed Jorrvaskr – the work, roof over my head, somewhere to sleep. The companionship. Some I've missed more than others." Hjördís smiles again, watching Aela working, the heat of her gaze heavy enough that Aela stops what she's doing to look up so she can give her a wolf's grin. Like most, there's little love to be found between Njada and their newest sister, and Torvar is already starting to resent that she's rising through the ranks the way he might if he'd stop drinking quite so much.

It's then that Aela takes not of the bow peeking over one broad shoulder, opposite the head of her great-axe. She points it out because it's there to be pointed out, new and glinting in the light. It makes Hjördís flush red as a maiden, and Aela will be damned if that doesn't make her even _more_ intrigued.

"Dragons don't stick to the ground, and unlike everything else, it's not so easy to go chasing them. Not when they can circle around breathing fire and ice at me." She hesitates, unlike her, delaying further by stripping off some of her gear including the bow, more ornate than Aela's so likely plundered from a tomb or bought with whatever treasures or gold she plundered from one. Aela's bow doesn't need to be fancy. It does the job she made it to do, shaped exactly the way she wants it. "Eventually it gets them back in my range."

"You need lessons." Aela guesses, returning her attention to the bear. Hjördís sighs, stretching out next to her.

"I need lesson _badly_. Unless I want to make dragons fall from the sky laughing at my poor aim and my shots veering wide or only flying a foot away."

Aela considers the idea of it. Pressed close to Hjördís after so long away. Plastered against her back as they work themselves into a sweat until their muscles sing from the ache of it all. Settling back by the fire to share the mead that's no doubt in the bottom of both their packs to trade a few tales, barely able to move. A quick dip in the river to wash away the sweat if they can stand it. She's taught others before and she has eyes after all – her shield-sister is an attractive woman, and though it isn't forbidden to become involved, the Companions are her life. They are so much more than what might be a fleeting infatuation or a tumble in a bed.

Lessons she can still do, that she is sure of. She isn't made of stone and what happens within her own bed is her own business.

"Help me finish this up, we're going back to Jorrvaskr, and you won't be leaving until you're good enough to come hunting with me."

**iv;**  
The fourth time and it's Aela's blood that Hjördís has drunk deep of. She lopes after her sister instead of tracking her the way she really should because it thrills her, and it had set the wolf in her snapping and snarling before she'd slipping her skin for the one she moves in now. Skjor had laughed and sent her off. (Everyone remembers Farkas, how that had gone, the way the old man talks, how he looks at some of them. Aela knows how his eyes linger on here when she returns no matter how careful she was; there's the way he looks at Hjördís, different, hopeful, it makes her gut clench and the wolf in her growl dangerously each and every time.)

Broken branches guide her, mismatched prints since Hjördís isn't used to this body and how it moves. By a shallow incline there's hair caught in the scrub that Aela pauses to nose at before she tips her head back and howls into the night, hot breath fogging the cold night air. The wolves of the plains answer in kind until all of Whiterun echoes with their mournful song but it's one note in particular she cocks her head for, howling again. Blood calls for blood, something in the marrow of her bones that creaks and aches before she hears it, carried on the wind. A shakier note that the rest, new and raw.

She sets off, nose to the grass, bounding streams and rivers, snarling a challenge at a sabre cat that dares to flash long jagged teeth at her before thinking better of it.

Before long she comes across an elk with its throat torn open so wide only a thin piece of skin connects the head to the body still, the belly slashed open by claws so much more powerful than the hands of man or beast, guts spooling out into the tundra cotton and mountain flowers. She noses at them too. Still warm. Not long ago then. Beneath the smell of blood, and fur, and fear, and wolf she smells something that part of her calls Hjördís, more like a forge and an alchemist's lab, smells she finds harder to name as a wolf.

When she howls a third time it's softer, more inquisitive. The answer comes quicker and from up in the hills. There are caves up there that are good shelter for man or beast, the sort of place that they found Farkas though he was himself again, trembling, unable to believe what he'd done. Aela licks the blood from the elk from her muzzle and makes for the hills, and soon enough there's snow covering the grass with a trail of dark red blood for her to follow along with good clear prints. And sure enough there's a wolf once she reaches the end, black as a shadow, gold eyes gleaming.

Aela moves first. The elder, the forebear, the one whose blood allowed for this to be so, butting her head against Hjördís' who whines, bending low. There's blood on her breath, clinging to her teeth. Some impulse makes Aela move to lick it and Hjördís growls. They fly at one another, the solid clash of fur and bone on the stone floor of the cave, loose stones skittering out from under them as every terrible sound out of their jaws echoes, more noise than malice. It ends with Aela pinning Hjördís, jaws about her throat, the suggestion of pressure-

Hjördís stares up at her, dark braids a wild tangle, only a thin ring of grey left at her eyes, blood down her chin to her throat where it disappears into her armour. Aela shudders, body rippling and becoming smaller, herself once again still sprawled atop and across her shield-sister, both of them breathing heavily. The blood of the hunt is loud in her ears but Hjördís shudders, curling in on herself.

Aela rolls over, ridding them of their weapon then gets Hjördís on her side so she can press herself close to her back, her nose in her hair. She murmurs nonsense, strokes her flank, holding her until her breathing evens. Aela falls asleep with her forehead pressed to a broad shoulder, hand curved over a solid hip.

Come morning it takes both of them to wash the blood from Hjördís' hair, Aela hunting breakfast while she braids it before they return to Whiterun together, to the work that has to be done, the things that can't be put on hold indefinitely.

"Thank you," Hjördís tells her by the Underforge before they go back to join all the rest. The feral edge in her smile is new now that the shock has worn off. It suits her. "Will you run with me? Next time?"

"As many times as you want."

**v;**  
The fifth time they meet a legend unfurls wings of leather that sound like a great clap of thunder when it takes flight. Once Hjördís met Aela with the ash of Helgen still in her hair before she slew a dragon that had the Greybeards calling her, this woman that shakes the world. Still, she ran to help Aela and the rest slay a giant, and so Aela races to her shield-sister, drawing her bow as time seems to slow about her.

Hjördís turns when the dragon howls, grinning fever bright when she spots Aela, one eye on the beast as it circles back around. The grass about her glitters from shards of frost, more of it dripping from her hair, her armour, her axe.

"Need a hand sister?" Aela calls, hearing the savage smile in her own voice as they track the dragon together, Aela readying another arrow.

"I'd welcome it, especially from you." Hjördís breathes deep, bellowing a challenge up at the beast as Aela fires. It's the same as any foe, that was the lesson both her mother and father handed down to her: draw, aim, release, draw, aim, release. Over and over she repeats it until the softer underbelly, throat, and wings are riddled with her arrows.

The ground trembles when the it lands, then it opens that great gaping maw to unleash more ice but Hjördís charges, swinging her two-handed axe as it if it weighs nothing and the shout dies in the dragon's throat. Aela keeps firing, aiming for the eyes now that it's down, the snout, beneath the wings and where they meet the body; this is how they fight together, once watching out for the other, never giving the enemy the chance to gain any sort of advantage. The dragon tries to bite at them, or lash out with a tale but it's too clumsy. One wing barely supports it when it lurches awkwardly into the air blast more ice at them as Hjördís tackles Aela to the ground, covering her with her body, a solid heavy weight. _Oh_ , Aela thinks as Hjördís' lips brush against her cheek as the ice hits her back, wondering if she's imagining it but against the chill touch of the magic, it burns like a brand. _Was this how it felt to be her in the cave?_

Hjördís hauls her up before the ground can shake again, and in this she's the expert for once, not Aela, a position Aela can't say she's been in since she was a girl. The dragon lands clumsily on the damaged wing, lurching to the side as it tries to support so much weight on a damaged limb. This time Hjördís shouts, flames pouring from her mouth as Aela is struck dumb for a heartbeat. A heartbeat can make all the difference in a battle, and she isn't a milk drinker or a whelp or a novice. She should know better. But that mouth touched her cheek. That mouth laughs with hers. That mouth has been a mouth she's thought about increasingly often as of late, and now it spouts flames that sends scales flaking away, blackened curling things. Aela fires an arrow, keepings firing.

A final charge is made by Hjördís where she vaults up and onto the dragon, straddling it so she can swing her axe down over her head, driving it between the eyes, through the skull, into the brain. The sound pierces through Aela as she watches Hjördís slide off the beast.

Then the flesh strips away from the dragon, vanishing before her eyes in a rush of flame and wind that swirl around Hjördís.

There she stands as she did that first day they met, with ash in her hair, and her war paint smeared with sweat and blood. The great long bones of a dragon separate them, Aela passing between hollow ribs to press a hand to this woman, amazed when it comes away unburnt. Hjördís smiles, taking a shuddering breath

When Aela kisses her, her mouth tastes of the mead Hjördís must have been drinking earlier, of blood, of something that might be fire if it had a taste. She doesn't quite know why she's done it, with her hand brace on her shield-sister's armour but she's wanted this since the beast blood at least, and probably before that if she's honest. Hjördís is kissing her back until they have to breathe, until Aela is dizzy with it, both of them laughing. Hjördís sinks down against the curve of the ribs jutting out in the grass, pulling Aela with her as the rush of battle leaves them both to leave the plains of Whiterun quiet; Aela can hear a wolf howling, spies a herd of mammoth grazing in the distance, feels her heart slowly returning to normal.

Hjördís turns to face her, the smile unsure and almost shy. Of all the things, after her deeds witnessed and recounted, after slaying a _dragon_ not moments ago, it's the kiss that makes her nervous.

"Come here," Aela tells her, seizing the woman by the shoulder to pull her closer, to kiss the corner of her mouth, nipping along her jaw, down her throat. "Meet me by the Underforge tonight."

"Is there not work to be done?" Hjördís asks, a roughened palm skimming up Aela's side where her armour doesn't cover. She shudders, bites Hjördís' lip.

"There is a hunt," Aela growls, lips against her throat to feel the rapid thump of her pulse, and the delighted laugh when she tackles her to the grass, tasting sweat and dragon's blood, enough to make her head spin.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Played a little fast and loose with the timeline for quests for doing this but I didn't really have the time to replay the Companions quests to write this fic.


End file.
